Last fall, playwright and filmmaker David Mamet scandalized the entertainment world--and the world of the political left--by using the left-leaning pages of the Village Voice to come out as a libertarian. In "Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal," Mamet spoke of his mid-life reckoning with the false collectivist assumptions of his youth, of how that has led him to a new appreciation of the U.S. Constitution and the separation of powers, and of how he has been delighted to discover the work of freedom-oriented thinkers such as Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell.
"I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace," he wrote. "A free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism."
It was a delicious moment for freedom and common sense -- and it was also no surprise to anyone who has ever regarded Mamet's work through the lens of liberty. The Winslow Boy, Mamet's film adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1946 play, is a stunning exploration of the importance of due process, of justice, and of standing up for principle even when the personal price is high. It frequently appears on lists of favorite libertarian films. Likewise, Mamet's Oleanna, which began as a two-person play and then became a singularly gripping film, explores with excruciating precision the way in which "sexual harassment" as a category can wreak havoc with fairness, honesty, principled behavior, and due process for the accused.
Mamet's work has long had freedom woven into its essential fabric. It's just that now, his formal sense of his politics has caught up.